Boycotting Chinese Products Is A Challenging Campaing
RELAT Imports can be substituted when good quality domestically produced goods priced competitively are available. The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT)’s war cry to boycott Chinese goods runs the risk of traders scoring an own goal, as substituting many of those items with locally produced goods competitively might prove difficult, though not impossible, in an extremely value-conscious market in India. The confederation’s national general secretary Praveen Khandelwal says that the boycott Chinese product campaign will cut the value of imports from that country by Rs 1 lakh crore or $13 billion by the end of the calendar year 2021 – about 20-25 per cent reduction from the current level of imports from China. India imported goods worth $70 billion in the financial year 2018-19 and $62 billion in the April-February period of 2019-20, which is about 14 per cent of the merchandise imports of the nation. The CAIT expects that the anti-China sentiments in the country following t...